Elephants have emotions ‘just like humans’

Elephant conservation should be considered in much the same way humans consider plans for their own health and well-being, an elephant management workshop heard on Tuesday.

Sociality, which is the conservation of social structures and processes, has largely been ignored in conservation, according to a paper by Gay Bradshaw of Oregon State University and Allan Schore of the University of California.

It was read out in their absence at the Elephants Alive workshop, held at Wits University in Johannesburg.

“The implications for the emergence of post-traumatic stress disorder in elephants make this oversight alarming,” read the paper.

The paper reads that culling is not a viable tool for elephant conservation, reflecting a paradigm shift over the past decade or more in the basic sciences that underlie principles of conservation biology.

“Recent interdisciplinary research has revealed that all vertebrates share the same underlying structures and mechanisms that dictate properties once considered uniquely human: culture, personality, language and emotions.”

Neuroscience has put animals and humans on an equal scientific footing, reads the paper.

“Stress, trauma and other social disruptions – what biomedical research has identified as having profound influences on human psychology, physiology and behaviour – holds for other social animals such as elephants.”